The Only 6 Countries in the World Without Airports

Sorry, you'll have to drive!

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When you’re traveling to another country, the first thing you probably do is book your flight. In just a handful of countries, though, you won’t be able to fly directly.

As a 109-acre area nestled in the middle of Rome, Vatican City doesn’t have its own airport, but visitors can easily get there via Italy’s capital. Similarly, San Marino is also surrounded by Italian land. The fifth smallest country in the world has a little more than 33,000 residents and sits just nine miles from Federico Fellini International Airport in Rimini, Italy. (Take a look inside the world’s biggest airport.)

To visit Monaco—the second-smallest country in the world, right behind the Vatican—you’ll have to go through France’s Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport, which is just a 25-minute car ride away from Monaco, which has a population of just 38,500. (Maybe that’s why developers didn’t bother creating anything like the 16-minute shortest flight in America.)

Interestingly enough, the third and fourth smallest countries, Nauru and Tuvalu, respectively, have their own airports; the fifth and sixth smallest don’t. We already mentioned San Marino, and to get to Liechtenstein, you’ll have to go through Switzerland’s St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport, 24 miles away from the capital.

No such luck trying to fly into Andorra—which only requires a 25-mile drive to get from one end of the country to the other—either. Sitting in a Pyrenees mountain range valley means building an airport runway would be difficult, so visitors can arrive through Spain or France. The closest option to Andorra’s capital is Girona-Costa Brava Airport in Spain.

Finally, there are no airports directly in the Palestinian Territories, but Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel is just 26 miles away from Bethlehem.